Soporific Seizing: How I think Epileptic Awareness Should be Spread

Not on my Watch

I take so few occasions to discuss this matter privately, let alone publicly. 

Often, I find it only fitting to contemn and deride people's efforts to express their grievances in response to a condition or disease with which they are afflicted, simply because it is always saturated with pathos. I have lived with my disorder for nigh 20 years, and I would find it contemptible to go out of my way to try to elicit emotional responses of sympathy and pity. I mention this not to slander those who have had the courage to share their stories with others, but because I often feel as though their demonstrations are counter-productive; invariably evoking the very cheap compassion and compathy they claim to dislike and spurn.

Recently, I watched a TED lecture on the subject of epilepsy and the experiences of a young woman who was so burdened. I won't disclose her name or personal history, but I will say (as someone who is probably more qualified to judge it) that her presentation was not only uninformative and tiresome, but down-right nauseating. I am not a prolific student of the art of rhetoric, (despite my Aristotelian efforts to do so) and I readily acknowledge the distinction between the tone, delivery and communicative style of speech versus print. Nonetheless, I felt as though she squandered her time on the main stage. Attempting to slowly and laboriously convey her story, she made a fellow sufferer's eyes glaze over. As I assumed, at one point, she inevitably broke down into tears before a vast and captive audience. While that does in a subtle way infuriate me, I do my best to empathize with the overwhelmingly potent influence of emotion. My criticism and distaste is derived from the ensuing events - and her meretricious sobbing. Once she gathered herself and re-established some semblance of stability, her performance's quality declined. Not inconceivable, but to my taste, a waste of her own time and the audience's. 

I found it to be a crying shame that such a person spent nearly twenty minutes on an issue rarely broached or discussed, and other than garnering temporary and tawdry sympathy, achieved so little. I can honestly recognize the unpopularity of my perspective, but as someone who shares her disability and who also has a penchant for the art of dialectic and conversation, I feel vindicated in expressing my disdain. Needless to say, I am doubly aggrieved. I think it is an outright exposition of duplicity and hypocrisy when people say they evade any opportunity to speak about their malady due to the uncomfortable sorrow with which it is met, only to deliver their story in such a maudlin way once they do.

I don't know about my fellow epileptics, but I wouldn't want the few chances I have to increase awareness about our condition besmirched by a whimpering explanation; appropriately followed by simpering remarks. I am already fed up with the plaintive and petulant culture that is fulminating in our society - I won't have our case for attention and scientific focus expounded with querulous infancy. One cannot control the emotional response of their audience upon reception, but they can tune the key of their own song. 

I may be alone in this campaign, but I feel as though our cause would be much better met and respected if it were explained with sobriety and rationality. Axiomatically I am biased by professional interests and propensities, so I don't take any objections in this vein too seriously. 

As Thomas Paine said in his Age of Reason, John Milton said in his Areopagitica, and John Stuart Mill in his essays On Liberty, free expression and inquiry are essential for the polity not only because of their right to profess their own thoughts, but not to be deprived of the ability to hear everyone else's; especially those in a small dissident minority. For, as we all can intuit, it must have taken any defector from an overwhelming consensus quite some time to muster their opinion. On those grounds, I beseech you to not only consider my own, but to value and perhaps prefer logos to pathos. Much more truth, comprehension, and progression are sure to follow if we do.

Thanks, a garrulous gadfly 

Jesus-in-the-Middle: How One Foible Rabbi Corrupted Geopolitics

A Reflection on Israeli-Palestinian Relations and their Theological Implications

The ultimate irony. A quality without which none of us could survive or thrive, a prevalent paradox has gone completely unnoticed due to prejudice and ignorance. Could it be that I, a layman and novice in the political fold, has stumbled upon one of the most incongruous and self-contradictory principles in Evangelical American-Israeli foreign policy? While I'd like to once again assert my own novelty to the subject matter, I cannot resist proffering my opinion. 

Jesus of Nazareth, known almost ubiquitously under different titles of authority and relevance, is indirectly influencing the cartography and allegiances of Middle-Eastern society. Alliances fashioned, ideologies fossilized, conspiracies contrived; enmity established. Why and how does he do this from beyond the grave. No, Abrahamic monotheists, I am not conceding the definite existence of this eccentric preacher or his eschatological involution. Don't throw your arms about in an ecstatic stupor. Turn your eyes to the following - an essential meditation. 

While I do not advocate even more romanticizing of Islam, the theological tenets of Christianity and Islam are more similar to each other than to their Jewish counterpart. Christian fundamentalists and Jewish fanatics have celebrated their coalition in hopes of having the messiah return. The fact that that verb is employed should be enough to raise suspicion. Traditional Jewish scripture (among many other incompatibilities) has two fundamental problems with Christian theology: Pauline doctrine of justification by faith, and the concept of a revenant messiah. 

Saul of Tarsus who purportedly encountered Jesus on the road to Damascus in a vision (much more symptomatic of an epileptic seizure; take it from someone who knows) proclaimed that one need not have their humanity and salvation contingent upon the nature of their moral conduct and beneficence on this earth - so long as you believe and accept the doctrine of vicarious redemption by human sacrifice, you live under grace and will be acceded into paradise. Apart from the obviously appalling Christian actions that have since been performed based off of this absurd premise, it is completely irreconcilable with the precepts of the Pentateuch and other Judaica. In addition, the more relevant issue pertains to the idea of a messiah (aside from being labeled divine) who will need to come back to earth because his initial efforts were unsuccessful. Per Jewish canon, the messiah will unite all the chosen people in the holy land and reign having established peace on earth - with slight cultural preference and advantage to the children of Abraham, of course. Among many other accurate and cogent objections, this would discredit the Nazarene's claims to religious authority in this world. Yet, smarmy ecumenicism reigns supreme and the coalescence of theocratic nutbags persists. 

Conversely, the Islamic tradition does believe in the return of the Messiah; specifically, Jesus son of Mary. While there have been plenty discrepant accounts and needless sources of theological disagreement about this man's provenance and power, he remains a salient character in both faiths. Portions of the Hadith describe scenarios in which all Jews will be targeted and discriminated (putting it mildly). Fatuous stories about the end of days, when Jews will attempt to hide behind flora to escape the wrath of an omnipotent creator, only for trees to betray them and decry their location to the all foreseeing monoglot - Allah. This hardly seems benevolent or sensitive to the Jews, and probably more congruous with the age-old spirit of Christian antisemitism. After all, it was only recently that the cosmological accusation of deicide was revoked by the Catholic Church; from some Jews. 

In short, both of these parties wish for the second visitation of this inanely ascetic priest. One would think that this would shift evangelical sympathies to the Arabs, thereby persecuting Israelis. I am compelled to mentioned that I do not desire the subjugation or blacklisting of any tribe; an opinion not so common among messianic zealots. 

It is my position that this ordeal would have been settled and a compromise would have been reached much sooner if the nature of the conflict had been purely secular. There is no solution as long of the parties of god maintain a veto on public affairs, a plain fact that continues to elude political leaders and figureheads.

Not wanting to make light of the situation, I humbly submit this to you

A perfidious primate